BJP using Anna, Ramdev to garner power: Cong

Updated: Friday, August 24, 2012, 10:59 [IST]

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New Delhi: With the BJP unrelenting in its demand for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's resignation in the wake of CAG report, Congress on Thursday said the opposition party was using the shoulders of Anna Hazare and Ramdev in its game to garner power.

Rejecting the demand for resignation of Singh, party General Secretary Janardan Dwivedi alleged that the anti-government campaign showed the "growing frustration" in the BJP over the emergence of a new leadership in the Congress, making a reference to Rahul Gandhi.

"BJP never does politics on its own strength. It always requires the shoulders of others...Now they are feeling the need of Anna Hazare and Ramdev and using their shoulders in the game of power," party General Secretary Janardan Dwivedi told reporters.

Accusing the opposition party of using anti-corruption plank to capture power, Dwivedi said the BJP has "run out of patience" after losing power at the Centre in 2004, which only grew by 2009 when UPA again formed the government.

Replying to questions regarding BJP's demand for the Prime Minister's resignation, Dwivedi said, "Prime Minister's resignation is not a joke. It does not happen like that".

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal expressed confidence that if a debate took place in Parliament the government will be able to turn the table on the Opposition.

"We will blow the report to smithereens," said another Union Minister speaking separately on the condition of anonymity maintaining that there are stark differences between the draft report and the final report of the CAG adding "one institution should not run down the other. Every institution has its set jurisdictions, to which they should confine".

Earlier in the day, Congress President Sonia Gandhi told a group of party MPs to counter the Opposition aggressively and not to be on the defensive. "We had done no wrong. We need not be defensive on it," Gandhi is learnt to have told the MPs, who met her in the morning after both Houses were adjourned for the first time. Slamming the BJP for disrupting Parliamentary business repeatedly, Dwivedi reminded the party's MPs that even their leader and former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee never resorted to this kind of "indignified conduct" and cited it as the reason why the nation accepted him.

The Congress leader said BJP, which was earlier Jansangh, used the shoulders of Ram Manohar Lohia, Jaiprakash Narayan and Vishwanath Pratap Singh in 1967, 1977 and 1989.

Dismissing reports of BJP's plan to resign en masse from Parliament, Dwivedi urged the media not to fall into the "trap".

"This is their rumour mechanism. This is the mechanism of their false publicity. Nobody should fall into their trap," he said.

Dwivedi asked why the BJP did not take those steps, when the NDA was in power for six years, for which they are now attacking the UPA government.

"Congress has an ideal combination of young and old leadership. Now they are bothered what will happen to them since the leadership of new generation is emerging in the Congress. Those who cross the age of sixty considers them young seeing their elders."

"Misconceptions in life are ok sometimes. They serve to maintain self-confidence but in politics, it is the new generation, which takes forward steps and in the Congress, the new generation is taking steps forward," he said taking a dig at BJP's Narendra Modi without naming him.

"We condemn such conduct which they are resorting due to disappointment. This conduct is not in the spirit of democracy. There is an elected government. Does the resignation of Prime Minister happen in any country in this manner? Mere making noises brings out nothing," he said.

Dwivedi, however, refused to go into the technicalities of the allocation of coal blocks saying the government will give a detailed response if the House runs.